


Hard Bodies, Soft Hearts

by suitesamba



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fluff, Infidelity, M/M, Snarry-A-Thon17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-23 22:35:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10728666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: Minerva has her reasons for pairing new professor Harry Potter up with Deputy Headmaster Severus Snape for her annual faculty scavenger hunt.





	Hard Bodies, Soft Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> The British term for pacifier is dummy - you’ll see it in this story and may wonder why they’re so hard to find in the castle.  And thanks to the fantastic mods, to the ever-helpful badgerlady and accioslash, and to the prompter.
> 
> Prompt: To celebrate her birthday, Minerva pairs up her party guests for a scavenger hunt. Naturally, she puts Harry and Severus together

Harry Potter had a number of expectations about being a Hogwarts professor. He expected he’d make a lot of mistakes as he learned the ropes. He expected James and Al and Lily would try to walk all over him. He expected to gain half a stone once he started eating all his meals in the Great Hall. And he expected that his new boss, his old head of house Professor McGonagall, would do everything in her power to make his transition from the MLE to Hogwarts as smooth and painless as possible.

And while he expected that someone would try to play matchmaker now that his divorce was final, he didn’t expect it would be Minerva, and he most certainly didn’t expect she’d try to pair him up with Severus Snape. After all, they’d been the subjects of an unauthorised tell-all book soon after the war, with author Rita Skeeter pitting one against the other in a bid to cause a Wizarding blow-out of epic proportions, and to be there with her camera crew when it happened.

The effort had failed when Harry and Severus joined forces to sue her for defamation of character. They handily won, and all proceeds of the book went directly to charities of their own choosing.

So convincing was Skeeter’s retelling of the imagined events, however, that it had taken some time for Harry to convince Ginny that he and Snape hadn’t, in fact, had a sordid fling the summer after the Final Battle, which they both had spent at Hogwarts. Snape, for his part, had even been forced to take Veritaserum to prove to Minerva that he could continue his deputy headmaster duties without lusting after the eighth-year students. Harry had eventually given up his copy of _Lily’s Eyes_ when Ginny found it under his side of the mattress. He pretended to have no idea how it got there, and hoped she’d not noticed how well-thumbed the steamy bedroom scene was.

Harry and Severus had put it all behind them, at least, and had moved on with their lives, not exactly friends, but far more than strangers.

But here he was, two weeks before classes were to start, atop the Astronomy Tower with the resident Potions Master and deputy headmaster himself, in closer proximity for a longer time than they’d been since their detention days. Harry was on his hands and knees, crawling around in the dark searching for a lid from a tube of lip balm. Admittedly, it had been his idea to come up to the Astronomy Tower, on the rather weak premise that girls coming here to snog might freshen up their lips first, and at least one of them was bound to have dropped a cap. He realised the same thing might happen in the girls’ bathroom, but he’d much rather crawl around up here than on a mouldy and damp tile floor.

“Could you please just give me a Lumos?” he asked, exasperated, as Snape peered through a telescope at the star-spangled sky, unconcerned that they had only thirty minutes left and were still short three items from the scavenger hunt list Minerva had shoved into Harry’s hand an hour ago.

“You’ve been chastising me for the past hour for using magic,” Snape replied coolly.

“We can’t use magic _directly_ to _cheat_! We can’t summon the item, or transfigure it, or conjure it. But it’s dark up here! Using a Lumos is no different than using a Muggle torch, or turning on the lamps in a dark room!”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to clarify any request for magic during this activity,” Severus calmly stated. “Unless you want to retract your threat to hex my bollocks off if I use magic again.”

“You know what I meant,” Harry said with an exasperated sigh.

“Perhaps – but I’m not taking chances. I’m actually quite fond of my bollocks.”

Harry blushed. Did Snape realise he’d just quoted verbatim from _Lily’s Eyes_? Fortunately, it was so dark on the moonless night that Snape couldn’t see Harry’s face.

“I bet you are,” he mumbled, resuming his aborted search over the flagstones.

“If you’re ready to give up, you might want to take a look at this,” Snape said, expertly changing the direction of the conversation and veering away from the discussion of his bollocks. It would not do to have Potter realise he’d read — and reread – Skeeter’s awful tell-all book.

Harry sighed and stood, brushing off his robes and the knees of his trousers. He really didn’t want to give up – Neville had elbowed him after Minerva broke them into pairs before sending them off. “You’re doomed,” he’d said as Harry looked around for Snape, who’d claimed he had to use the loo and hadn’t returned yet. “Snape hates this game – he and Hooch usually team up. They usually win, too, until they’re disqualified for cheating.”

Harry’s eyes had widened at Neville’s unfortunate use of the word ‘cheating.’

“Oh – Harry. Sorry, mate. You know I didn’t mean….” Neville trailed off, looking properly chagrined. 

“No worries. Just – well, it’s still a bit raw, isn’t it?”

And raw it was indeed. Harry had been enjoying a successful career and a perfectly respectable marriage until suddenly, he wasn’t. His wife of fifteen years, the mother of his three children, had been caught on a sex holiday on the Costa del Sol with Lazarus Pringle, when she was supposed to be covering the Spanish Quidditch finals for _The Daily Prophet._

Lazarus Pringle, coincidentally, had been Severus Snape’s handsome and successful significant other for nearly ten years.

Harry hadn’t taken it well. He’d taken it so poorly, in fact, that his work had suffered from bouts of unpredictable accidental magic.  Six months after he and Ginny had separated, the MLE had assigned him to the vacant Defense Against the Dark Arts position at Hogwarts for the upcoming academic year. He’d been instructed to use his significant abilities to train future generations of witches and wizards, rather than compromise the safety of his peers when he saw a redheaded woman walking arm in arm with a blond man. As there were no redheaded professors at Hogwarts, the Ministry thought it a safe bet Potter wouldn’t compromise the safety of the children. But then again, safety at Hogwarts had never seemed too large a concern, either.

Harry brought himself back to the here and now, let out a frustrated breath, and faced Snape.

“What is it?” he asked in answer to Snape’s request to look through the telescope.

“A summer phenomenon,” Snape answered, positioning the telescope and looking through it again. “The Perseids Meteor Shower.”

“Perseids?” Harry walked over to Snape and stood beside him, scanning the sky where the telescope was pointed. 

“An annual event, usually in August. Associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle. It’s particularly strong this year – sixty or more meteors an hour. Ah!”

“Wow.” Harry pointed to a long streak in the sky. 

They watched for a few more minutes in companionable silence, Minerva’s faculty ice-breaker game all but forgotten. After a time, Snape straightened up and spoke, his voice appropriately low in keeping with the awe-inspiring grandeur of the astronomical display.

“Mr. Potter – you’re taking this game far too seriously. Had I been paired with Professor Hooch as I _usually_ am, we’d be back in the faculty lounge already, celebrating our win.”

Harry glanced over at Severus, narrowing his eyes at him. “I have it on good authority that you and Hooch would have cheated and been disqualified.”

Severus snorted, affronted. “I do not cheat.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry. You know what I mean,” Harry apologized. “It’s just – well, Professor McGonagall obviously went through a lot of trouble to put this scavenger hunt together. She was so excited about it. I don’t want to let her down.”

Snape raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “You obviously don’t know Minerva very well.”

Harry sighed. “Maybe not – but this is my first faculty meeting. I want – no, I _need_ to make a good impression.” He shook the paper again. “I’m kind of on shaky ground after…the divorce.” He lowered his voice to an almost whisper, embarrassed.

“Potter – you were on shaky ground _before_ the divorce. You became quite – hmm - _unhinged_ when she counter-sued.” He regarded Harry thoughtfully a moment. “Had you _really_ not had sex for six years?”

“What?” Harry dropped the bag holding the items they’d gathered already. There was an ominous pop and tinkling sound as the fragile Muggle light bulb they’d procured from the Muggle Studies classroom exploded. 

Harry ignored the bag. “How – where did you hear that?”

Severus raised an eyebrow as he bent to pick up the bag. “I suppose I have my answer, then.”

“No. That’s a complete exaggeration!” Severus ducked just in time as the telescope behind him started spinning wildly.

“Mr. Potter! Get hold of yourself! Do remember that I was in a committed relationship with the object of your wife’s affection! In the course of dismantling our own long-term relationship, certain things were revealed – mainly for spite.” He watched Harry warily. “If Minerva knew you were still prone to accidental magic, she’d return you directly to the Ministry!”

“And they’d boot me right out.” Potter rested his forehead against the wall and inhaled deeply, held his breath for five long seconds, then exhaled slowly. He repeated the exercise three times then stood straight again, squaring his shoulders. “My apologies. I forget that ours wasn’t the only relationship broken up by her – their – affair.”

“Apology accepted.” Snape opened the bag, pointed his wand inside, and muttered “Reparo.” He handed the bag back to Harry. “It was intact when we found it. I’m simply restoring it to its previous condition.”

Harry took the bag without further protest.

“Alright,” he said as they walked to the staircase and began the long descent. “We still need the lid, a cat toy and a baby’s dummy.” 

“There are cat toys all over the castle – we’ll look on the fifth floor behind the medieval weapons display,” Snape said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tube of peppermint Chapstick, removed the lid, dropped it into Harry’s hand, then regarded the lidless tube sadly before pocketing it again.

“You had this the entire time?” asked Harry, incredulous. “You let me crawl around all over the floor of the Astronomy Tower like an idiot, banging up my knees, and you had this in your _pocket_?” 

He looked like he might spout out some more accidental magic, and Snape slowed his pace, making sure there was a bit more distance between them. As intriguing as Harry Potter was turning out to be, and as nice as his arse looked as he crawled around on the tower floor, he still preferred not to be hit in the side of his head by a war hammer.

“Minerva never returns the loot,” he said. “I need the lid. I hate getting lint on my lip balm.”

Harry looked like he was about to point out that a Potions Master worth his salt would make his _own_ lip balm, but Severus cut in before he could speak.

“As you insist we complete this pointless game, I suppose we must consider the dummy.”

“It’s the bonus item,” Harry explained, examining the list and rolling his eyes. “What does that even mean?”

“The prize for finding the bonus item is being excused from Hogsmeade duty first term,” Severus explained. “It’s certainly worth the effort.”

Harry sighed. ‘But where are we going to get a dummy? There aren’t any babies here and we can’t leave the grounds. This really is impossible. No one’s going to find a dummy in the castle.”

“No one except me,” Severus said with a mysterious smile.

Ten minutes later, a perfectly gobsmacked Harry sat on Severus’ armchair with tiny baby Pepito cupped in his hands, one miniscule long-fingered baby hand wrapped around Harry’s smallest finger. Severus’ house-elf Rosita hovered nervously at his elbow, torn between watching over her baby and prostrating herself before this most miraculous apparition of Mr. Harry Potter Friend of the House-elves Himself. 

Across from them, comfortable on the end of his favorite sofa, sat Severus Snape, watching Harry Potter melt under the adorable magic of the baby house-elf, and twirling a miniature dummy from his little finger, looking inordinately pleased with himself.

ooOOOoo

“If you’re always paired up with Madam Hooch, why did Minerva put us together tonight?” Harry asked Severus as they lay side by side some time later on the roof of the Astronomy Tower, watching the tail end of the meteor shower, this time with the benefit of a more-than-adequate cushioning charm.

“Minerva is a conniving meddler,” Severus answered, but there was a fondness in his voice that belied his words.

“She’s afraid we’ll get into it, isn’t she? Like we used to.” Harry mused. “She wants to make sure we’re civil to each other before the students arrive.”

“Potter, we’ve been civil to each for nearly twenty years, ever since our supposed affair was so rudely put on display by the human beetle. Minerva knows this. The entire faculty knows this. The entire Wizarding world knows this. This is not about _civility_. This is about something else altogether.” 

“She can’t think we blame each other, can she?” Harry asked. “For what happened with Ginny and Laz?”

He’d taken to calling Ginny’s lover Laz, but only because the man snobbishly insisted on being called Lazarus.

“Of course not.” Severus closed his eyes and felt the summer breeze blow across his prominent nose. “Do I blame you for not fulfilling your wife sexually, so that she went looking for someone else to take care of her physical needs?”

“Hey! I was tired, alright? I was out on stake-outs for days at a time. Plus I practically raised Lily myself after Ginny went back to play for the Harpies.”

“Hmmm.” Harry could not see Severus’ smile.

“Besides, I don’t blame you for mooning over every pretty redhead you saw, to the extent that Laz decided he had to see for himself what all the fuss was about.”

Now it was Harry’s turn to smile with satisfaction. Ginny had thought that one would really cut him deeply, with all its insinuations about Snape and Harry’s mother, but Harry had thought it rather sweet that Snape still harboured that chivalric love for Lily. After all, she’d been dead for nearly forty years.

“I didn’t – I _don’t_!” Severus sputtered a bit, then closed his mouth tightly. A brilliant flash of light, a hundred miles long, streaked across the sky and they watched it, quietly, until Snape spoke again.

“And even if – even if I _did_ turn my head from time to time, ‘seeing what all the fuss was about’ is a ridiculous excuse for philandering.”

“It’s just as likely she went after him,” Harry grudgingly admitted. “She likes blonds. I swear she’s always had a thing for Malfoy.”

He really wasn’t excusing Ginny’s behavior, or Laz’s, for that matter, but deep, deep in his heart he knew that things wouldn’t have gone so pear-shaped so quickly had their respective relationships been stronger to begin with.

“So why do you think Minerva paired us up, then?” Harry asked. The meteor streaks had petered out, but the night breeze was pleasant and the company easy.

“She would like us to get to know each other better, I suspect,” Severus answered. “She is worried about me. I suspect she believes we would ground each other.”

He didn’t admit to Harry just yet, despite the fact that he was privy to all the details about Harry’s anger issues following the break-up, that he’d been dealing with his own demons. While Harry raged, Severus sank into a depression, fueled by Firewhiskey and melancholic music. Minerva had good reason to worry about her Potions Master and second in command.

Harry had grown rather quiet beside him.

“I wouldn’t mind getting to know you better,” he said into the quiet night. “Seems like we might have more in common than our exes sleeping with each other and a never-really-happened torrid affair.”

Severus quite agreed. And since Potter seemed to be in a sharing mood….

“What you said earlier – about being tired, and raising Lily practically on your own….”

Harry sighed. “That again?”

“Yes – that again. Really, Harry? For more than five years? There must be more to it than exhaustion.”

Harry stared at the stars. The darkness, the vast expanse of the heavens, gave him the courage he wouldn’t normally have had. He’d not confessed this next bit to anyone.

“It was after she retired from the Harpies,” he said, speaking more to the sky than to Severus. “She went back after Lily was born – I took a year of family leave, then Molly and Fleur took care of the children during Quidditch season when I was working. But she only played a couple years more. She got the offer from the _Prophet_ and knew she’d be able to spend a lot more time at home but still keep up with the game. 

“It was great at first. But then – well….” His voice trailed off. Severus knew he’d come to the difficult part of the story  and helped him along a bit.

“She changed, somehow? Was she resentful about giving up the game? Was she bored at home?”

“No. That wasn’t it. It was – well, she…she got all _soft._ ”

He spoke the last word so quietly that Severus thought he hadn’t heard correctly.

“She got all _what_?” he asked.

“Soft,” admitted Harry, more clearly this time.

“Soft,” repeated Severus. “Soft.”

“Yeah.” Harry shuddered. “Soft.”

No one spoke for a minute or two. Severus was turning the word over in his mind and Harry was wishing the earth would just swallow him up.

“I see,” said Severus, at last.

“You do?” asked Harry, daring to turn his head toward Severus a fraction, surprised.

“I think so. You’re actually referring to her body. How she lost muscle tone once she changed careers.”

Harry sighed. “That’s weird, isn’t it?”

Severus smiled into the night, contemplating a Harry Potter who didn’t like soft breasts and thighs and stomach. “No, Harry. Not so very weird at all.”

Above them, behind them, sitting unnoticed on the roof that overhung the door leading to the tower, a grey tabby paused in her grooming, cocking her head to listen to the quiet voices below her.

If cats could smile, this one would be beaming from ear to ear.

ooOOOoo

“So, Minerva, how did this year’s scavenger hunt turn out?”

Albus Dumbledore stood toward the front of his portrait, greeting her as soon as the headmistress morphed into her human form upon entering her office.

“Harry has admitted to a preference for hard bodies and Severus doesn’t think it weird at all.”

Albus’ painted eyes could not twinkle, but they certainly would have had he been flesh and blood.

“Excellent! The year is off to a good start, then!”

“And they watched a meteor shower together, Albus. Can you think of anything more romantic than that?”

Albus sighed, perhaps remembering a day when the cool breeze had blown over his own face and his eyes twinkled like the stars when that certain someone walked in the room. “Only watching one from a gondola in Venice,” he mused. “Or perhaps from atop one of the great pyramids. But the scavenger hunt – which team won this year?”

“Oh, Poppy and Pomona as usual. I’m beginning to think they have a stash of hard-to-find Muggle items squirreled away somewhere in the castle.  Harry was terribly disappointed, I think. He took the whole thing quite seriously.”

“Competitive streak,” said Albus. “So – what did you get this year?”

Minerva reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of stuffed mice, jingly balls with tiny bells and a fat ball of yarn. “Such an excellent opportunity to clean up after myself,” she said with a satisfied smile. She held up a particularly ratty and realistic looking mouse. “Oh, I’ve missed this one,” she said. 

She tossed the collection into a basket in the corner, then opened a cupboard to extract a bottle of scotch and poured herself a healthy portion.

“To self-serving faculty bonding activities,” she murmured as she took her first sip.

“To Severus and Harry,” added Albus, lifting his own glass of port, the same one from which he’d been sipping for twenty years now.

Minerva smiled and clinked her glass against the portrait.

“To Severus and Harry,” she repeated. “To hard bodies….”

“And soft hearts,” Albus finished.

It was probably far too early for snogging under the moonlight, but she rather fancied she saw them there on the Astronomy Tower, wrapped tightly in each other’s arms.

“Where have you been all my life?” Harry would say as he tasted Severus’ lips again, and pressed his well-toned body against Severus.’

“Right here, waiting for you,” Severus would reply, pushing errant ebony locks out of Harry’s vibrant green eyes as he bent to kiss him again.

Minerva sighed, a faraway look in her own old and wise eyes. She glanced at the window as she lifted her glass again, caught the tail end of one last shooting star, and made her wish.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment here or at [Livejournal](http://snape-potter.livejournal.com/3725412.html), [Insanejournal](http://asylums.insanejournal.com/snape_potter/1662677.html), or [Dreamwidth](http://snape-potter.dreamwidth.org/967570.html).


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